seems an unlikely member of this increasingly powerful and interconnected group. As a Scot, he belonged to a distrusted minority; as a parish minister, he held his position at the whim of local leaders. Yet within two years of his 1685 arrival, the young clergyman had convinced Sarah Harrison, daughter of Benjamin Harrison II, to marry him, even though she was already betrothed to another. This alliance with the wealthy and influential Harrison family gave Blair colonial ties that equaled his impressive British connections. Blair had gained the attention of the bishop of London after being forced to flee Scotland because of a political dispute. The bishop, whose responsibilities also included the colonies, soon appointed Blair his representative in Virginia. Blair’s lobbying for the college and its presidency, and his attack on Governor Andros all relied heavily on the bishop’s support. The crucial meeting in that case (in which Blair was supported by Benjamin Harrison III) took place before the bishop and the archbishop of Canterbury. By then, Blair had also developed close ties with John Locke, the philosopher and political thinker who served on the Board of Trade during those years. Nicholson’s own correspondence with Locke seems to have begun only because of Blair. In this broader world, it was not clear which of the two Virginia leaders was more important. William Byrd II, who opposed the minister’s lobbying for the return of Nicholson in both England and Virginia, considered Blair the primary figure in the relationship. He told the hearing that the minister expected to “be able to lead [Nicholson] by the nose as much as he pleases.”66
The returning governor was determined to resist such dependence. Unfortunately for Blair—and for the well-being of Virginia—the governor could only imagine a relationship involving superior and subordinates. Obedience was a common theme in the governor’s tirades. When Harrison’s successor as attorney general suggested that one of Nicholson’s commands might be illegal, “the Gov’r in great wrath took him by the Collar swearing that he knew of no Laws we had but would be obeyed without hesitation or reserve.” Angered by another gentleman, he complained that “he must hang one half of these rogues before the other would learn to obey his commands.”67 The governor delighted in an unlikely story he had heard about Blair’s wedding ceremony in which the bride three times refused the traditional promise to obey her new husband. Needless to say, Nicholson did not admire Sarah Blair’s supposed independence so much as the idea that the man who more than anyone else had challenged his leadership had himself faced insubordination within his own household.68
Figure 4. Sarah Harrison Blair, painted on a 1705 trip to London with her husband, was part of a prominent Virginia family that would include two nineteenth-century American presidents and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Her brother served as the colony’s attorney general until Governor Nicholson removed him from office. John Hargrave, English, Active 1693–c. 1719, Portrait of Mrs. James Blair, née Sarah Harrison (c. 1670–1713), c. 1705. Oil on canvas. Gift of Mrs. Mary M. Peachy, 1829.002 Muscarelle Museum of Art at the College of William & Mary in Virginia.
The clash, however, was not just between two men who sought to command. It was also between two larger groups, the imperial government and colonial elites, with each side seeking greater control—and each believing the other side’s demands (at least at times) dangerous and illegitimate. And, although Virginia offered a particularly intriguing pair of central adversaries, similar controversies took place in all parts of British America.
A number of American colonies had also experienced crises of authority in the 1670s and 1680s. Jamaica, after being taken from the Spanish in the 1650s, became a haven for marauding pirates. Carolina’s government was briefly overthrown in 1677, while New England’s Indians began what was known as King Philip’s war two years earlier in 1675, the same year Chesapeake nations began their attacks on Maryland as well as Virginia—and the year before Nathaniel Bacon set up a force to fight back before turning on the latter’s government. For Massachusetts leaders just as much as for Virginia, these clashes raised the problem not only of physical survival during the war, but of political survival afterward—in the northern colony’s case, because of the high taxes necessary for recovery. A few years later, England’s 1688 Glorious Revolution set off another series of American upheavals as Boston elites overthrew the Dominion government, and New York and Maryland toppled their regimes as well.69
The aggressive colonial policies of Charles II and James II sought to rein in these problematic provincial elites. The attempt to remake Virginia’s governance followed a policy suggested earlier (and on a larger scale) in Jamaica, where the royal governor sought to push through laws that would have made the colonial assembly virtually unnecessary. After this program failed, a new Jamaica governor deliberately removed established leaders from their position in favor of less wealthy and well-connected men who would presumably be more loyal. English rule in New York, recently captured from the Dutch, showed a similar disregard for the province’s notables. The duke of York did not even create a legislative body there—and he failed to include one in the Dominion of New England he established when he became king in 1685.70
Despite these difficulties, however, a number of other colonies besides Virginia also developed more stable local leadership. A powerful native-born elite emerged in Maryland and the Caribbean Leeward Islands during these same years. And Jamaica’s leaders, facing an intense imperial offensive against their power, grew strong enough to mount an English lobbying campaign on a scale that dwarfed Blair’s efforts—emerging with unprecedented control over English colonial policy. Other colonies, however, followed more troubled routes to stability. Provincial elites in both New York and (as Chapter 2 notes) the Carolinas remained weak until far into the new century.
Massachusetts, where provincial leadership developed earlier than in other colonies, offers a particularly telling comparison with Virginia. The contemporary governorship of Joseph Dudley created similar discontent. But Dudley had deeper roots in his colony. Son of a Massachusetts governor, Dudley had been part of the provincial leadership since his young adulthood, even serving in the London delegation that unsuccessfully opposed the revocation of the colony’s charter. But his decision to serve as the temporary governor of New England in the Dominion and then (alongside Nicholson) as a member of its council aroused intense anger. He was imprisoned along with Andros when Bostonians overthrew the government in 1689. Both were sent to England, where Dudley remained in virtual exile for more than a dozen years.
Although Dudley was a native rather than a newcomer, his 1703 return to Massachusetts as governor was more divisive than Nicholson’s restoration to Virginia five years earlier. While the latter’s reappointment was widely celebrated, Dudley’s commission reopened old political wounds. Still the two governors shared a common desire to strengthen royal government. Dudley collected more money during his governorship than the colony had raised in all its previous history. His opponents complained that impoverished New Englanders were being forced to sell even the feathers from their beds to discharge their tax bill.71 Both governors, furthermore, saw the Anglican Church as a central part of strengthening royal power. Although personally a Congregationalist, Dudley carefully steered patronage to church members. His strong sense of duty almost matched Nicholson’s. “The strongest command,” Dudley told colleagues, was “a request from a superior.”72
Like Nicholson as well, Dudley aroused strong ministerial opposition. He faced ferocious attacks from the father-and-son combination of Increase and Cotton Mather. Although the two ministers were Dissenters rather than members of the church, the elder Mather shared with Virginia’s commissary both strong English connections and a history of successful lobbying.73 The Mathers, however, failed to dislodge their governor. Dudley stayed in office for thirteen years and was finally removed only when the death of Queen Anne required an explicit renewal of his commission. Dudley’s greater success depended upon two significant advantages over Nicholson. The Massachusetts native’s 1690s exile helped him develop strong English ties that even Nicholson found difficult to match. By the time the latter returned to Virginia as governor in 1698, he had been in America for almost a dozen years, with only a single return visit lasting less than a year. Dudley moved back to Massachusetts in 1703